Out riding yesterday, had a tangling of handlebars with a friend. I've mostly got away with it, just some skin gone from my leg. He's ended up in hospital, operation to pin his shoulder back together.
Checking the bike over today and I've broken my seat (Flite SLR, so Ti rails), one rail has bent so it now leans left. Tried straightening it and failed, then tried bending the other one to the same shape, but also failed.
Anyone managed to resurrect a seat? How did you do it? Don't want to bin it unless I have to, really comfy and a new one would cost £lots.
Thanks.
You'll need a vice and some proper leverage to bend Ti. Must have been a big impact to bend it in't first place.
Alternatively you could blame your friend and sue him for the cost of replacing stuff.
could you get the rail out of the sockets & straighten in a vice ?
(reckon it'd be weak afterwards though, & maybe get crushed while trying)
I have a vice, trouble is getting it to grip a saddle-rail, everything else is in the way. Can one remove the 'saddle part' (for which there is probably a name) from the rails? And can one get it back together again? How have you done it Scaredy?
It was a fairly big impact, about 20mph on road bikes, we both hit the tarmac, but I rolled and ended up on grass, he didn't roll at all, just hit the deck and stayed put. Smashed his helmet as well as shoulder/collarbone. Took a while for the ambulance to find us, we didn't really know where we were which didn't help!
Equipment-wise we pretty much got away with it, probably £8k worth of bike bewteen us and 'only' £200 worth of damage, one seat and one helmet, some torn bar tape and two ripped shifter hoods.
It's going on a £4k bike? Just buy a new one and be thankful that you're not the one in hospital.
Caution - ti rails don't like repeated impacts....
(off a flite ti)
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Yeah, sounds like toast i'm afraid...
Maybe some group riding skills might be good too?
I popped one of the rails out on a SDG belair Ti. I made a jig to bend the rails out of the seat. The jig frame rests on the rails front and rear and pulls the rail centres away from the seat using a threaded eyebolt. Once you have the rail free you could straighten it in your vice and use the jig to reinstall the rails to the seat. Or you could buy a new seat and save yourself a whole lot of faffing about.
I'll give your method ago Avalanche, got a large number of strange contraptions in the garage, bound to be something to do it, need some sort of inverse vice.
Would love to just buy a new seat. However, I'm broke (that £8k was far from an even split aracer, mine was about 1.5 of it and I have very little left...) I'll try a bit of faffing first, got to be worth an hour or so, and if I completely wreck it in the process I've not lost anything.